Issues in man pages of gettext

[Helge Kreutzmann]

Dear gettext maintainer,
the manpage-l10n project[1] maintains a large number of translations of
man pages both from a large variety of sources (including gettext) as
well for a large variety of target languages.

During their work translators notice different possible issues in the
original (english) man pages. Sometimes this is a straightforward
typo, sometimes a hard to read sentence, sometimes this is a
convention not held up and sometimes we simply do not understand the
original.

We use several distributions as sources and update regularly (at
least every 2 month). This means we are fairly recent (some
distributions like archlinux also update frequently) but might miss
your latest upstream version once in a while, so the error might be
already fixed. We apologize and ask you to close the issue immediately
if this should be the case, but given the huge volume of projects and
the very limited number of volunteers we are not able to double check
each and every issue.

Secondly we translators see the manpages in the neutral po format,
i.e. converted and harmonized, but not the original source (be it man,
groff, xml or other). So we cannot provide a true patch (where
possible), but only an approximation which you need to convert into
your source format.

Finally the issues I'm reporting have accumulated over time and are
not always discovered by me, so sometimes my description of the
problem my be a bit limited - do not hesitate to ask so we can clarify
them.

I'm now reporting the issues for your project. If future reports
should use another channel, please let me know.

[1] https://manpages-l10n-team.pages.debian.net/manpages-l10n/

Man page: gettext.1
Issue:    What is a »natural« language? I assume it means American English, but 
this is quite far from being »natural«… I propose to use something like 
»message in the original language«.

"The B<gettext> program translates a natural language message into the user's "
"language, by looking up the translation in a message catalog."
--
Man page: gettext.1
Issue 1:  'echo' → B<echo>(1)
Issue 2:   regular directory → default directory

"If the TEXTDOMAIN parameter is not given, the domain is determined from the "
"environment variable TEXTDOMAIN.  If the message catalog is not found in the "
"regular directory, another location can be specified with the environment "
"variable TEXTDOMAINDIR.  When used with the B<-s> option the program behaves "
"like the 'echo' command.  But it does not simply copy its arguments to "
"stdout.  Instead those messages found in the selected catalog are "
"translated.  Standard search directory: /usr/share/locale"
--
Man page: msgcmp.1
Issue:    Why not simply »Options:«?

"Operation modifiers:"
--
Man page: msgexec.1
Issue:    translation catalog → message catalog (to be consistent with other 
gettext man pages)

"Applies a command to all translations of a translation catalog.  The COMMAND "
"can be any program that reads a translation from standard input.  It is "
"invoked once for each translation.  Its output becomes msgexec's output.  "
"msgexec's return code is the maximum return code across all invocations."
--
Man page: msgfilter.1
Issue:    translation catalog → message catalog (for consistency with other 
gettext man pages)

"Applies a filter to all translations of a translation catalog."

msgstr "Wendet einen Filter auf alle Übersetzungen eines Meldungskatalogs an."
--
Man page: msggrep.1
Issue:    translation catalog → message catalog

"Extracts all messages of a translation catalog that match a given pattern or "
"belong to some given source files."
--
Man page: msgmerge.1
Issue:    Why not simply »Options:«?

"Operation modifiers:"
--
Man page: ngettext.1
Issue:    What is a »natural« language? I assume it means American English, but 
this is quite far from being »natural«… I propose to use something like 
»message in the original language«.

"The B<ngettext> program translates a natural language message into the "
"user's language, by looking up the translation in a message catalog, and "
"chooses the appropriate plural form, which depends on the number I<COUNT> "
"and the language of the message catalog where the translation was found."
--
Man page: ngettext.1
Issue:    What is the »native« language? Moreover, a »textual message« is what 
Gettext accepts in general, a »non-textual« message doesn't exist either.

"Display native language translation of a textual message whose grammatical "
"form depends on a number."
--
Man page: xgettext.1
Issue:    Join these two paragraphs into one
"(only languages C, C++, ObjectiveC, Shell,"

"recognize KDE 4 format strings (only language C++)"
Man page: xgettext.1
Issue:    itstool → itstool(1)

"write out itstool comments"

-- 
      Dr. Helge Kreutzmann                     debian@helgefjell.de
           Dipl.-Phys.                   http://www.helgefjell.de/debian.php
        64bit GNU powered                     gpg signed mail preferred
           Help keep free software "libre": http://www.ffii.de/

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